In Her Absence
by leafgreenflower
Summary: Marinette's had enough of being someone's project. She shuts her phone off and throws it in the train station bin on her way out of Paris. Two years of silence later, Ladybug's back in the city for a "just friends" date with... Chat Blanc? (Three chapters, rated T for discussion of veteran's issues.)
1. Diner En Blanc

_A/N: I wrote this as a one-shot - and then it ended up being 15k words so I've broken it into three chapters for easier reading. I'll post one each day._

* * *

"You know what?" Marinette said, staring down her friend. "I'm done."

"You so aren't. You're still head over heels with him."

"Not that. I'm done with you constantly trying to set us up. Don't you get it?" she pleaded with her friend. "It's not something you can make happen, and if you did, I'd blame you for ever."

"But you're perfect together, and you both just have to realise it", Alya grinned.

"See that? That's exactly what I mean", Marinette said. "You just can't leave us alone. I can't even be friends with him because you're all over us." She sighed. "It's been four years. Four years I've known him. And I still can't be friends with him." She glared at Alya. "Because of _you_".

"Hey, I'm not the one who can't get a word out around him".

"Well, I'd have learnt how to by now if I was ever allowed to just _talk _to him without being pushed at him or it being part of a plot." Marinette shook her head, fully exasperated. "Look, I don't want to fight you on this any more. I've given up."

"Great", Alya smiled. "So you're coming to dinner with us then."

"No, I'm not." Marinette smiled back, but it felt forced. Forced through a wall of anger she hadn't felt since Hawkmoth was defeated. "I've got a prior engagement."

She turned and walked away, leaving her best friend standing there. After a minute, Alya shrugged. Marinette would be at dinner. She always was if Adrien was coming.

But that night she didn't show.

* * *

Two years later...

Marinette raised her stylus to the tablet, then put it down again. She knew the design was perfectly fine, and changing it at this point would only make it worse. She also knew she was just trying to avoid thinking about things.

One thing in particular. Or maybe two.

The train rattled on. She swiped up a blank page on her tablet and began scrawling randomly. She hadn't seen any of her friends. Supposed-friends. For two years. That day with Alya, she hadn't been kidding. She had an interview in Berlin for a design school, and she had the train pass in her pocket. But instead of getting to tell her friend the big news, Alya had been all Adrien-this and Adrien-that. Marinette hadn't been thirteen for a while even then. It had just been easier to walk away. Shut her old phone off, drop it in a bin as she boarded the train. Her parents had her new number, and had agreed not to give it out to anyone. They'd asked her if she was sure, because friends were what got you through the tough times. She'd shrugged and said they'd stopped being friends a while back, and she just hadn't noticed right away. Plus she had all her friends' numbers on the new phone if she changed her mind.

It had been a lie, but also a half truth. She looked down at the tablet and wasn't surprised to see she'd scrawled a pair of cat ears. There was one tiny red friend – and one magic phone – that had gone with her. And it had Chat Noir's number in it. He was the one person from Paris she'd stayed in touch with while out of the country. After defeating Hawkmoth he'd asked her, politely and with none of his usual smirk, if they could hold off on the identity reveal. It was unexpected, but she agreed. He'd waited long enough for her condition to be met (though she'd never thought it would take so long to defeat Hawkmoth – thirteen year olds were so optimistic!). She could wait for whatever it was he needed. And they'd called each other at least once every week since. Just friends. But friends who knew something nobody else in Paris did. What it was like to run over the rooftops, what it meant to have fought for years, sometimes on little sleep, all the while pretending that you must have just forgotten to do that homework or assignment. What it was like to win, after so long.

Who it was they'd won against.

The police and courts had kept Hawkmoth's identity suppressed. The final battle had been big, extravagant, dramatic. Everything everyone had come to expect, topped with a literally earth-shattering showdown. But the very last moments of it, the three of them trapped in an iron box that was rapidly shrinking, Cataclysm already used up, Lucky Charm spent, bare minutes from detransforming, nothing left except one desperate chance. Those moments still terrified her in her nightmares. If Hawkmoth hadn't been distracted by something she couldn't see in the dark, for just that one moment... She forced her mind away. It had happened, it was done with. She and Chat reassured each other of that every week. Those last moments in the box had been out of view of every camera. Nobody saw who Hawkmoth was. Except her and Chat, and the waiting police. Gabriel Agreste had quietly retired, as far as anyone else knew, and only she, Chat, Adrien and Nathalie knew that his "retirement villa" was maximum security.

After that, it had been even harder to try and talk to Adrien. She knew what weighed him down, but as Marinette she couldn't say anything. Sometimes literally, though she'd mostly gotten over the stammer by then. She'd look at him, and her throat would seize up with all the things she couldn't say, couldn't let slip out. As far as she knew, he'd never told anyone about his father. Though, maybe in the two years she'd been gone, he'd broken his silence and at least told a friend. She hoped. It was a big thing to carry on your own.

She would know.

She looked back at the sketch on her tablet, and added a few lines. A smile stretched out under the ears. Gods, she missed seeing that smile. But in just an hour to go, she'd be back in Paris again.

The thought was not comforting. The thing about leaving is, sometimes you didn't want to come back. But she had a good reason. Chat had asked her, very politely, if she would like to be his guest at Diner en Blanc.

She'd said yes.

Of course, a dinner where everybody wore white meant no black leather. Or red spandex. So they'd talked it over. He still... wanted to remain masked. To her, but also in general – he didn't want to be recognised by his friends and have to explain her. That was OK with her, because she didn't want any civilian former-friends to recognise her either. They could have said the other was a date from an Internet site, of course, but... the masks just made it easier. Anonymity in a cast of white-clad thousands. The odds of someone recognising them were small. She hoped.

Her parents thought she was arriving tomorrow. She didn't want to have to give any explanations about tonight. She tapped her tablet, and smiled again. Friends were a rare thing in her world, now. She'd made a few at her new school, but kept them distant enough to not have to answer any difficult questions. And when someone did inevitably ask something, she simply pretended her German or English or Italian wasn't quite good enough and "misunderstood" the question. It wasn't much of a stretch, she still got the subtleties of Italian and English wrong regularly anyway. Her parents still regularly asked "if there was anyone", but they'd not been bothered by the answers she gave. However, going on an actual date with someone, even a friend? She knew they wouldn't let up about it.

The PA announced arrival in five minutes. She looked up, surprised, and laughed. Apparently she could still lose far, far too much time to worrying about a boy. As she made sure she had her wheelie case and shoulder bag with her, she carefully didn't think about how she'd successfully avoided thinking about the Other Problem in the process.

The Travellers' Lounge at the station was convenient. She paid for entry and a shower, then took her white (of course) wheelie case through. She fed Tikki, who'd slept through the train ride and now offered hair advice. It took her nearly an hour to be happy with her primping and fussing, but it was worth it. And she had the time. She'd agreed to meet Chat on the lawns near the Eiffel Tower at seventeen, to wait for the text that would tell them where Diner en Blanc was to be held. Nobody ever knew until the last minute, that was the fun of it. She smoothed her sundress out. The satin lining was giving a little static as it rubbed against her white stockings. She liked the lace overlay though, with its simple, large white polka dots. Spots without being spotted. The dress also had a cargo-style pocket on one hip. Just big enough for a phone, or a wallet, or a kwami. Tikki flew in and snuggled up into the cotton padding Marinette had put in, then went back to sleep. She smoothed her hair one last time, checked her eye makeup, and then put on her white mask. A simple outline adhesive mask, bought from an online store that specialised in supplying drag queens and stage performers who needed such things to Stay On. She thanked her luck that she wasn't allergic to any of the common adhesives, because the mask felt like it had been superglued to her face. Then she closed her white case and marched out of the station, pulling it behind her.

She wasn't the only person in white on the street, though there weren't too many. A scattering of people all nodded to each other and her, a shared secret. That was part of what made this fun – knowing that tonight she wasn't the only one keeping a secret, or waiting for one to be revealed. She went to the next taxi in line, and the driver smiled at her. "Where are you waiting tonight, mademoiselle?"

"La tour de Eiffel, sil vous plait".

He nodded, and drove.

There were many people in white waiting. Most were with family or friends, laughing, talking, enjoying the relative warmth of the late afternoon and the still-blue sky. White folding tables and chairs lay in stacks against white hampers. People sat or stood, occasionally checking a phone. Marinette felt completely unnoticed as she walked up the avenue and she enjoyed the feeling. She got to the spot where Chat had said to look for him, and looked around. Sure enough, there was a tall, slender man nearby, waiting on his own by a small stack of goods. Admittedly, tall and slender men weren't in short supply in the park tonight. But no other was wearing... well.

White t-shirt, probably from a discount department store, her designer brain noted. Incredibly cheap. White jeans, also probably discount based on how they sagged around the knees. A little too big, too, needing to be held up by a belt. Which had a very badly sewn white tail attached. The T-shirt had some bits of white fabric attached, also sewn more haphazardly than anything she'd seen since college, that gave a vague impression of Chat Noir's uniform. She looked up into green eyes, not quite as green as she was familiar with, but close enough, and across the plain mask around them to a pair of white cat ears on... white hair. She smiled. His eyes crinkled. "Have I _spotted_ you?" he said.

She laughed and gestured to her dress. "Perhaps. I was here to _catch_ up with a friend". He touched his ears and laughed back, a sound she'd grown familiar with over the last couple of years. Then he extended his arm. She took it, and he pulled her in for a hug. It felt good.

"You did something with your hair. Should I call you Chat Blanc?", she said, pulling back and looking at his face. A shadow crossed it, and he pulled her close again. Not as a lover, but so that his voice could remain very quiet and still reach her ears. "I _really _didn't want to be recognised as my civilian self. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all. I really don't want to be recognised as mine either."

He traced her mask with one finger, and smiled. "I'm not sure how much that mask really hides anything."

She sighed. "Nothing on that particular website did."

His phone chimed, and he checked it. "It's the location. Milady, how do you feel about accompanying me to Parc André Citroën?"

"Of course", she laughed, and bumped him carefully, casually, with her hip. "Would Plagg like to ride with Tikki in my pocket?"

"On it", an unfamiliar voice said, and she felt more than saw a flash of black fly from his jeans into her dress pocket.

They joined the people walking through the balmy evening. She carried two chairs as well as pulling her wheelie case; he tucked the table under one arm and carried the hamper with the other. They didn't really talk about it, just flowed back into working together, reading each other's cues. It was nice. Comforting, even.

"Oh dear", he said, looking forward.

"What?"

"The gentleman in front of us. With the waistcoat that is longer than the front of his tails jacket".

She grinned. "Terribly incorrect. But I'm surprised you noticed."

"Well, I do know a tiny bit about fashion", he replied with a wink. She stopped and when he stopped to look back at her, deliberately, slowly, looked him up and down. "Really", was all she said.

"Admire the view all you like, my Lady. But it's true." As they resumed walking, he said quietly "Let's just say that poor clothing choices make it easier for me to not stand out in a crowd." She nodded at that, but had to ask. "Did you make this outfit yourself?"

"Yes!" he smirked at her. Then the smirk softened. "There's nobody in my house who knows their way around a sewing machine. I had to dig my mother's old one out of storage. Luckily there was a manual for it online. I think I did all right." He preened a little, making her laugh, then executed an almost perfect runway twirl in the terrible, terrible shirt that had her laughing right out loud. They walked a little farther before he quietly said "Your dress is really beautiful. It captures you perfectly. And it's right on point with the current styles".

She was oddly pleased. "It should be, I made it. Though I hadn't expected you to notice." She smiled at him fondly.

"You made it? So... is that what you've been studying all this time so far away, mystery lady?" His speech was flirtatious, but his eyes cautious.

"Yes, actually. Though I won't say any more if you don't want me to."

"Hmmm." He didn't reply any further. The swing of the picnic hamper got larger, and higher.

"Chat, careful, yeah?" When he glanced at her surprised, she flicked a glance at the hamper. He slowed the swing, abashed. "Sorry. I shouldn't shake up the contents."

"It's OK", she reassured him. "I know some things are still... difficult to talk about." She looked over at him and asked "Is there anyone else you've been talking to?"

He sighed. "Not really. I.. there was someone I thought about talking with." Suddenly he grinned. "You might know him. I'm pretty sure he's Carapace." His eyes danced with laughter at her expression. "There was something he let slip once that clued me in, and then once I thought about it it seemed pretty likely. The dude has a pretty distinctive attitude, after all."

"You know him in real life?" The question slipped out before she could stop it. "Never mind, don't answer that unless you want to."

"It's OK. He's not someone I see often. I did think that he might... well, some nights are just..." His voice trailed off. She stopped wheeling her case and took his hand.

"Full of dark dreams", she finished. He nodded. "Yeah", she said. "So did you talk to him?"

"I couldn't bring myself to find out if I was right. And then... I didn't want to reveal myself if I was wrong."

"I understand". And she did. She took the case back in hand, they turned the last corner, and there it was. Parc André Citroën. "How do you want to do this from here?" she asked.

"Would you mind if we headed for, um, an edge? I don't relax in crowds as well as I used to."

"Suits me."

He laughed at the pun, knowing it was there to reassure him. "Also, maybe we could look around before we unfold the table, just make sure there's no-one we obviously know too close to us."

"Definitely", she nodded.

They found their way to a place about two table spaces in from the edge of the crowd. Nowhere special, nowhere that anyone would look at twice. No-one they knew nearby, either, though for a heart-stopping moment she thought she'd seen Alya's familiar outline a few tables away. But the woman turned, and it was someone else.

Marinette was _not _going to think about Alya now.

She laughed at Chat's antics setting up the table, and finally gave him a hand. Then the first chair collapsed under him as he sat down, tangling itself in the second chair leaning still folded. He bounced back up, whipping his tail indignantly with one hand. Marinette apologised, but he stopped her. "It's all in fun. That's what I love about Diner en Blanc." He gestured around. "All these people, dressed in white to hide their differences, rich next to poor, everyone sharing the same beautiful evening." The joy in his eyes was louder than she'd seen for a long time, years even. "And I'm sharing it tonight with you!" There, the flirty cat was back. She welcomed it, knowing it was just a disguise to hide how deeply he felt right now about the world.

They'd learned that about each other, in their long-distance conversations these last two years. So much of everything they'd known about each other was just more mask.

She felt it explained how they'd never accidentally worked out the other's secret identity, even after years of working so closely together. Well, that and the fact that they'd never seemed to have any part of their civilian lives in common.

Together they got the chairs untangled. He pulled a chair out for her and gestured to take a seat. Then with the flourish she expected, out of the hamper came a white linen tablecloth, two white china plates and a pair of white linen napkins. She took those and began folding them. Her first fan came out looking a little too like a peacock's tail, and she quickly undid it and began folding a fleur-de-lis instead. Tonight was about new memories, not old. Gods knew they both needed them. Chat smiled as she passed him his. "Neat fingers", he said, producing a white napkin ring and pulling the tail of the fleur-de-lis through it, then showing her.

The napkin ring had little cat faces on it. She mock-glared at him. "That's probably an insult to elegance right there".

"Hey, cats are by far the most elegant of all creatures". He brushed his ears and winked at her. Then he began pulling food out of the hamper. "A first course, to nibble upon while the night settles in".

Two hours later, they were still smiling. Dusk had come, and darkness was just following it. The sky was that perfect dark blue that lets the first stars shine through if you are anywhere far enough from the city lights that they can be seen. The food had been very, very good – if in slight disarray from enthusiastic swinging. She didn't know where Chat had got it from, and while he wouldn't name an outlet, he did say that he didn't make it himself. A noticeable amount of it had disappeared into Marinette's pocket during the night, a curious habit that her dining partner politely made no reference to. They'd been careful about all their references, of course – dining in such close-packed quarters with strangers, they couldn't let anything slip. But it had been good to just be with each other, in person. And in the spirit of the night they'd enjoyed casual moments of conversation with the people on tables immediately by them. Marinette had forgotten how nice it was to speak just a few words in her own language and have strangers know what she meant. They were both relaxing. She could almost see Chat Noir's spine uncurling, unkinking like a cat's.

Which was what made it all the harsher when she heard Alya's voice just as she leaned down to the hamper by their feet to see if there were any more cheese gougeres.

Instinctively she stayed down, pretending to keep looking in the basket, and a gentle pressure on her shoulder said that Chat was telling her to stay down as well.

"I tell you, Nino, this has been amazing. I'm glad we came." Alya's voice was clear enough that they must be walking along the edge of the diners. Marinette was glad she'd suggested not being right at the very edge. "The only thing that would have made it better is if that rumour about Chat Noir and Ladybug attending was true."

"Unlikely," she heard Nino snort. "Even if Ladybug was back in town, there must be more than fifteen thousand people here. What are the odds we'd see them even if they were?" His voice faded away as he spoke, and she assumed the two had passed them by. She waited another ten seconds or so, and then the pressure on her shoulder eased and she sat back up.

"I'm a little less interested in who gets the last cheese gougère now", Chat said, dabbing his face with the napkin he'd been hiding behind.

"Me too, Chaton", she said. The good feeling of the evening had fled, and she knew it was just her but hearing Alya again had simply dampened everything. She attempted to put on a smiling face again. "I told you I'd bring some dessert. Care to take a guess?"

"Is it something we can take with us?" Chat was edgy now, too. If his white tail had been real, its tip would have been flicking. As it was, there was a slight tremor in his fingers as they laced around hers.

"It's miniature kouign amman, and yes. We can take it with us." She squeezed his fingers and patted her shoulder bag. "Shall we pack up slowly so as to enjoy the breeze?" She knew her partner of old would recognise the cue to stall, to let the enemy get far enough ahead to not realise Ladybug and Chat Noir were behind them.

So now she subconsciously thought of Alya as "the enemy". Well, that wasn't exactly unexpected when you got down to it.

They packed up as unobtrusively as they could, taking care to remove all trace of themselves. Around them, other diners were beginning to do the same. They timed their movements, even their teasing farewells to the people they'd spoken to over dinner, so that nothing about them stood out. Then they picked up their gear, and quietly walked away.

"So, you and the Ladyblogger", Chat said finally when there were fewer people close by.

"Me what?" she replied, concentrating on getting the wheelie case's wheel off the rut it had run down.

"I saw you flinch when she was near. I know I didn't want her to see us, which is why I tapped you to let you know. But when you sat back up, you'd lost most of the..." His hand waved vaguely. "The expression in your face".

"Hm", she replied, more a sound than an actual word. Chat left it at that, as she'd done for him earlier. But a few minutes later, he added "She must be able to keep a secret though. If she really is dating Carapace, that is."

Marinette looked at Chat, who held her eyes. "Yes, OK", he said, "I want you to tell me if I was right".

"It's Carapace's choice, not mine" she replied.

"That's confirmation enough", he grinned. "All you'd have had to say was "It's not him", but I know you can't do that if it's not true".

She grimaced. "You've got to know me too well".

"Really?" He almost sounded sad, and she looked straight back at him. There was vulnerability there.

"No", she smiled, "never too well." She put all the reassurance she could into it. Right now that wasn't as much as it could be, thanks to the new chill inside her. But she knew he knew that, and bumped him with her hip as she walked to emphasise it. "Hey!" that unfamiliar voice complained. "Watch out a little!". She and Chat both laughed.

"So, my Lady. Which remarkable and gracious abode am I escorting you and your luggage to?" The comment was flippant, but it caught Marinette off guard.

With all the detailed planning, she'd forgotten something. She needed some place to stay tonight.

The look on her face must have told Chat the story, because he laughed. "Are you telling me that my Lady's clever and complex plan left out something that obvious?"

She looked at the ground. "...yes".

He laughed some more, then hip-bumped her. "Hey, I know. I'm sure Queen Bee would put you up." Then he put up his hands in mock-shielding against the daggers of her eyes. "What? She's gotten better over the years."

Plagg stuck his head out of her pocket just enough to look up at her and say "No, she hasn't". Then Tikki dragged him down again.

"Seriously, though, if you need a place to crash I know she'll have it sorted in under thirty seconds. She's good like that."

"How much of that thirty seconds will I have to spend listening to her gloat about how I couldn't have done anything without her?"

From the pocket, Plagg called out "Twenty nine", before being hushed.

"I like your kwami", she giggled.

"So", he began to tick off on his fingers. "Not Queen Bee. Not Carapace, because he's working at a club tonight like he does most nights, but also because you don't want to see the Ladyblogger."

Marinette liked that he listened to what she said and ran with it without trying to argue her down. She really didn't want to have to explain it, and probably couldn't without giving away who she was. And if Chat Noir had talked to Carapace enough to realise who he was, which probably wasn't that hard but still, he probably had met other of the Ladyblogger's friends along the way. Including, maybe, one who was no longer a friend.

Maybe never had been.

She sighed. "Chat, I... I just got tired of being one of her projects."

He put a hand on her shoulder. "I... shouldn't say this, but I understand."

She shot him a look from under her eyelashes. Interesting. So he had known her personally. Chat Noir had been part of Alya's reporter focus, but that was part of Ladybug and Chat Noir's life together, nothing secret. To phrase it like that meant it related to his civilian identity as well. And _that_ was news.

He went back to ticking off his fingers. "Family?"

She shook her head. "I didn't want them to ask who I was going on a date with, so I told them I was arriving tomorrow." He laughed.

"Well, my lady. That leaves two options. We ring around some non-Chloe-approved budget hotels and get you booked in, or, and this is not compulsory or trying to push you in any way, you accept the hospitality of the Chat Noir Suite."

"I like sweets!" piped up a high-pitched, chirpy voice from Marinette's pocket.

"Tikki!" she hissed. Chat grinned. "I like your kwami too", he said. "I promise to be a perfect gentleman. But also", and he looked a little sheepish, "I'd enjoy staying up late talking with you. If you'd rather do that in a hotel somewhere where you can send me away when it's time to go to sleep or just when you've had enough, that's fine with me. But I've got plenty of space at my place, and a spare bed, and you'd be more than welcome."

It was the kitten eyes that got her. That, and the promise of staying up talking late. Normally she had assignments, or he did, or both, and they couldn't work on them while talking without giving away anything about themselves. This... was a free night. They could keep talking. She smiled at the thought, and felt something uncurl along her spine again. She pretended to think it over for a moment longer, but her mind was made up.

"I guess I have one question, kitty", she said, then held a deliberately agonising pause. "Do we eat the kouign amman on the way, or when we get to your place?"

He leapt up into the air with a look of glee. "My place! Let's christen it with all the crumbs!"

"What have I gotten myself into?" she muttered with an eye roll. As she'd intended, it just made his glee more vivid.


	2. The Shadow In The Room

It turned out Chat had an apartment not too far away, in the 7th arrondisement, perched on the third floor of an old building in a back street. As Chat said, "neither too close nor too far from both the university library and the fashion stores of Boulevard St Germain". It still took about half an hour to get there, and she was thanking her foresight in wearing good walking shoes. They were dressy flats with a sneaker sole, so they looked good with a pretty dress, but... well, she'd been caught out too many times before or after akuma battles, having to run for cover or for home or school in whatever shoes she'd put on as a civilian that day. She'd learnt. "Always, always, wear the shoes you can run in", she murmured. Chat squeezed her hand. "I hear you", he murmured back. Louder, he added "Did you hear that a woman in Japan has started a campaign to get the government to ban mandatory high heels at workplaces?"

"They still had that?"

"Apparently. It was just a dress code thing in a bunch of the bigger companies, but it's pretty hard to go against dress codes. Especially when 'it's always been done this way'." He screwed up his face in distaste. "I don't care if someone wants to wear them, but mandatory? It made me realise I'd better check the codes of conduct in my own... never mind." He caught himself, then turned to start getting out his keycard and fiddling with the foyer door lock. She let the silence run for a little, and looked around with interest. The old building was in reasonable condition, nothing fancy on the outside but it did have some nice Art Deco stylings that had lasted with time. It was both old enough and young enough at the same time to be "a little shabby" rather than "chic and happening". The security system however was very modern, and likely very expensive. It made sense for someone who had been one of Paris' superheroes. "I like your security system", she said. "If I ever move back, I'll need to look at the same sort of thing".

He nodded. "I'll help you with that. I spent a bit of time thinking about what exactly I wanted versus what I could afford." They went into the foyer and pressed the lift button. A retrofitted lift, by the look of it, probably added in the 1950s. Then the lift came, and the doors opened, and she reconsidered. The tech on display inside was subtle, sophisticated, and the stylings were distinctly 21st century. That combination suggested something very recent and top of the range. She started wondering just what kind of building this was.

Chat nearly pulled her arm off at the third floor, dragging her out of the lift by the elbow. "Honestly", she said, "it's like you've never had someone come on a sleepover before".

"Maybe I haven't!" he grinned, and flicked the silly white tail at her. The table slipped out from under his arm and crashed to the floor. She looked around guiltily. "I hope your neighbours didn't hear that".

"I have no neighbours on this floor", he said. "There's two flats above and two below, but I had the two on this floor joined". He grinned again. "After all, I didn't know how much space I'd need if someone came for a sleepover!"

Marinette couldn't tell how much of him right now was an act. The masks they both wore all the time, even with each other, made it tricky at the best of times. She knew that from a security point of view, if he could afford to do so, taking both flats was sensible. Lack of neighbours had its benefits, she thought with a rueful reflection on the student dorm room she'd rented for the last two years. And if nothing else, it gave you multiple entrances to use for surreptitious comings and goings. But... something in his eyes suggested that actually, he really didn't know what it was like to have someone else in his space, and he might have been completely serious about not knowing you could share a room with someone.

There was still so much of her partner that was a mystery.

He closed the door behind her, and they both dropped their burdens in the nearest empty space before collapsing on the couch. "I know it wasn't far, but I swear that table had started to weigh half of Gigantitan", he groaned. She considered the pros and cons of slipping her shoes off, but kept them on for now. Chat had no such hesitation. He pulled his sneakers off and threw them across the room towards a shoe rack near the door. His socks followed... sort of. The second one was caught in mid-air by Plagg, who zoomed out of her pocket in time to catch it. "Please don't eat my sock, Plagg", Chat sighed.

"You eat socks?" Marinette was amused. She'd never really got to talk to Plagg, seeing as she and Chat were usually transformed for their calls. There'd just been that one time with Style Queen.

"No, he doesn't", Tikki replied. Plagg just made om-nom-nom noises at his friend from inside the sock. "Stop teasing her, Plagg."

Marinette laughed. The little black cat-kwami dropped the sock on top of a pile of its mates, and flew over to her. "Long time no see, Bug."

"Given I only saw you when Chat Noir was incapacitated and separated from you, that's a good thing, right?" she answered, reaching out gently with a finger.

"Eww, no stroking. I am NOT into that gross mushy stuff."

"I thought Camembert was the definition of gross mushy stuff", Marinette laughed. She couldn't help it. Plagg was both the best and worst of Chat Noir's humour, by the look of it.

Focusing on that stopped her thinking about just how powerful he was, and how lucky they were that his power was usually filtered through a limited human. And what that said about Tikki's power being filtered through her.

"Nice to see you again, Chat Noir", Tikki piped up. Her white-haired partner held out a hand and she flew into it to meet him at eye level. Then she leapt from his palm and stroked his face, just once, never taking her eyes off him. Something passed between them and he looked away. "Would you like some hot chocolate or something, my lady?" he asked.

"Sure, I'll help you make it if you like".

"That would be... helpful", he admitted. She wasn't surprised. Their conversations on very carefully chosen safe topics had included a few stories about his, well, inexperience at cooking. Combined with the Black Cat's luck... let's just say, she had fully expected him to order his Diner en Blanc hamper from an online store.

He led her through a bright blue door into a small kitchen. Like the lounge, she recognised bits of it from the background of their calls. It was certainly snug. She smiled. Many apartments of this era had had their insides gutted out and replanned in a more modern open-plan style, to make better use of the tiny space. This one was still broken into its 1920s-style small rooms. That... even looked like some original tiling around the sink. She resisted the urge to grab her tablet and photograph the tile pattern.

"I know it's a bit on the small side, but..." he rubbed the back of his neck.

"It's not as if a student could afford much better", she said. "Especially not if you're renting both flats". She was still looking at the tiles, and didn't notice his tiny flinch.

"Yeah, not as if", he just agreed, and opened a cupboard. "My pots are under here." As he handed Marinette a saucepan, music started from his pocket. "Laisse-moi te chanter, D'aller te faire en, hmm-mmmm". She just looked at him with her eyebrows raised. "Hey, it's a happy tune" he said as he pulled his phone out and swiped it to voicemail.

"Not that. You had to pick a song that..." She trailed off. A song that was too cute to swear. He'd always had that kind of innocence about him, now that she thought about it. Marinette suppressed a grin.

"Hey, no probing my personal secrets", he said.

"Not until at least 2 am", she teased. They both knew from experience that when it got very early in the morning, they both sometimes forgot to filter.

"What? No fair!". Chat's face fell, but there was a glimmer in his eyes. "Unless, of course, my lady wishes to trade secret for secret?"

She drew in a breath, held it. "I said whenever you were ready, Chat. I meant that."

His shoulders tensed, then fell. "I was actually talking about my Spotify playlist. What were you talking about?" The teasing in his words didn't quite reach his eyes, and she regretted her words.

"I'm sorry", she said. That was all. He covered her hand, briefly, just a touch of acknowledgement. Something else they'd learnt about each other. Apologising straight away worked, even if they didn't quite understand what they'd said that they should be sorry for. The other couldn't always explain why words hurt without giving away too much. So they'd learnt to accept that something hurt, even when it had been meant in all innocence.

A lesson a certain so-called _friend _could have learnt, if she'd wanted to. But she hadn't. Marinette grimaced at the unwanted memory.

"I'm sorry", he said.

"No, that wasn't you", she said quickly. "I was just... remembering. Civilian stuff." She smiled and touched his hand back. "We get along so well sometimes, it's..." She trailed off, then added "I just wish..." and trailed off again.

"Wish that other people could accept your boundaries?"

Startled, she met his eyes. There was fire in the green. "How did you know?"

"I... um." He paused. "I might have a bit of experience with that."

Their first year, and their second, that had been an issue between them. But she didn't think that was what he meant. "You mean with us?" she asked.

"No, well, yes, but no", he said. "I was pretty clueless at the start but you and some people in my civilian life helped me work out how not to be breathing down your neck all the time. I actually meant in my civilian life. My boundaries." His hands fiddled with the whisk, waving it in the air over the pot of hot chocolate. She could see that the grated chocolate was risking burning and the milk risking overboiling. But she could also see that his hands needed to fidget, so she let him keep the whisk and just pointed his hands back to the pot. "Stir, kitty", she said, "and tell me if you want to".

He didn't say anything more until the hot chocolate was in two heavy, wonky-shaped ceramic mugs and they were sitting back on the couch again. The mugs seemed familiar, as if they'd been made by someone Marinette knew the style of. She resisted the temptation to turn the mug over and look at the maker's mark. At least, until she'd drunk the hot chocolate.

"As a civilian, I don't have a lot of choice about how I live my life", he began. "I know, everyone's kind of trapped where they are, that's normal. At least, that's what my philosophy textbook says in one of the chapters. We all get kinda stuck in place, going through the motions." He touched her hand, gently. "And then something happens to throw us out of our comfort zone".

She nodded. "Yeah". You could call five years of battling supervillain-powered creatures that.

"Thing is, I only got to be a hero as Chat Noir."

She understood this too, and he didn't follow the sentence further. Everything else in their life? Had had to stay the same. Even though it took massive amounts of work to keep it that way, even when they didn't want things to stay the same. Marinette would have loved to have been able to get a hug from her mother after some of those fights. To be told she was doing OK, that an end would come. But that would have meant lifting the veil. Letting the people around them know that the world was even less stable, less secure, more changed than they'd thought, that it was a more dangerous place with more to lose.

Neither she nor Chat Noir had ever lifted that veil.

"So, my civilian self has a lot of rules to follow, and I mean a _lot_. Unwritten rules, things we do this way just because they're always done this way by anyone who knows. And I'm one of the people who's supposed to know, so I have to follow them perfectly." His eyes fell, and she shifted over so that their legs were touching. "That would be OK, but there's always someone who wants to use the system for their benefit. Who... says one thing and does another, who pushes and pushes and pushes so that you move right where they want you to. And then whatever they do is your fault." He shivered.

She reached an arm around him. "It's never your fault", she said. "I know you know that."

He nodded. "But some nights..."

They didn't speak again for a little while. She kept her arm around him. Eventually she said "I also had a friend who never knew when to stop pushing."

"Yeah, you can say that again." Plagg stuck his head out from a small box on a shelf. Tikki poked her head out next to him and added "I think she pushed both of you a lot." The two Miraculous holders shot identical looks at their kwamis. Agreement on their own behalf, and puzzlement as to how that "she" applied to the person next to them on the couch. Plagg and Tikki looked at each other, then flew out of the box and over to their holders.

"Serious time", Tikki said. "There's someone's shadow in this room that needs to be faced, and despite all your nightmares over the last two years it isn't Hawkmoth". She looked at Chat Noir. "Ladybug almost didn't come back to Paris even when you asked her to".

He looked at her, vulnerable. "Not come back?"

She shrank into herself. "I was scared." She patted his hand. "Not of you. Well, OK, a little of you, because you've been my only friend for two years and I didn't want to find out that I was imagining that too."

"Wait. Wait, wait wait." He wriggled on the couch so he was facing her. "I was your only friend? Didn't you have classmates? Friends from school back in Paris?"

"I broke contact with them all when I left." She began to twist the lace of her dress in her fingers. "And I avoided getting to know my new classmates too well. They all like me, I guess, but I'm just a... non-entity socially. Each of them thinks I'm someone else's friend. The plus-one".

He reached out and hugged her without thinking. "I'm honoured that you stayed my friend", he said. "But I'm pretty sure it was you who told me we couldn't get through all this without support."

Tikki rolled her eyes. "It was. And who did you talk to, Chat Noir?"

Plagg answered for him. "Nobody. Not even the Carapace dude."

The two Miraculous holders glared at their kwamis, then subsided, looking at each other sheepishly. Eventually, and they weren't sure who started it, they found themselves laughing at the other, first at their expression, then at their shared idiocy. And then laughing just because they were laughing, and there was so much emotion there that it had to come out somehow. Plagg and Tikki looked at each other, shrugged, and waited.

Eventually they both came to a shuddering halt, breathing shaky but normalising, and fell back against each other on the couch. The boundaries were down, now, and they didn't stress about retaining "normal" body contact. They'd been thrown into poles together, off buildings together, tangled in yoyo strings, trapped in small rooms. Where someone's leg was on the couch wasn't really important.

Finally Marinette spoke. "I don't get why you say it isn't Hawkmoth."

"Under most circumstances, it would be", Tikki answered. "Plagg confirms that Chat Noir's had as many nightmares about it as you have, Ladybug." She fixed both of them with her blue eyes briefly. "But you should be healing from that by now, together, each of you supporting the other and helping make new memories. Or you would be, if it weren't for..." She fell silent, and Plagg stepped in. "Someone drove you apart when you most needed each other. They drove you apart so hard that Chat Noir buried himself into his civilian identity, and Ladybug actually fled the country and nearly didn't return." Tikki chimed back in. "Don't get me wrong, you'd still be struggling with the aftermath of Hawkmoth some days. Maybe even a lot of days." Plagg added "Especially you, kid", and something passed between them that Marinette didn't have a hope of catching. "But", Tikki continued, "you'd be healing. Right now you're... well, frankly you're not. You're not getting any worse, but it's still all far too raw."

Tears welled up in Marinette's eyes. "I'm sorry", she said to Chat Noir. "I shouldn't have let her get to me."

He stiffened. "My lady, I... I thought I was the one she was getting to."

They both looked at each other.

It was the phrasing, she knew. They'd both just let slip that it was a civilian thing. Because Marinette was darn sure that Tikki was talking about Alya. That was why she'd broken contact with everyone, after all. And that hadn't been anything to do with her identity as Ladybug. OK, maybe a little, but only because she knew who Rena Rouge really was. Chat Noir didn't.

Tikki and Plagg looked at them, and they looked at each other.

Finally Chat stood up. "We need blankets", he said. "It's getting cold". He went through the door next to the kitchen, pausing only to point the other way and say "The facilities are through that door". Which, now that he mentioned it, was an excellent idea.

A few minutes later, she'd washed her face and hands, and gone ahead and slipped her shoes off. She'd just have to deal with the inevitable stocking runs. And the itches under the mask, which was holding fine. As advertised. Chat Noir had piled a bunch of warm, fluffy blankets on the couch and was standing looking at it, white domino slightly askew from the effort. "Blanket mountain?" she said, curious.

"Not exactly. I was thinking of unfolding the couch so we had more room to sprawl under the blankets, but this room is", he waved around, "a bit small for unfolding it all the way. I'm regretting not having tried to get at least one bigger room in this place." He smiled at her. "Honestly? I was originally thinking that all the extra walls and rooms gave more places for Plagg to hide, or for me to transform and detransform out of sight if someone was in here."

"You could always just Cataclysm a wall, and get the Bug to put it back tomorrow morning", Plagg suggested. Tikki elbowed him. "Plagg!" The little black kwami was unrepentant. "Hey, I thought it was a great idea".

"Well, if we move the coffee table into another room maybe?" Marinette said. "You're right, we probably do want to sprawl. Mainly so that if we fall asleep talking, we don't wake up in the morning in some really uncomfortable position".

"I don't want it to be awkward though", Chat said quietly. "And, well, masks."

"Mine will stay on while I sleep", she said, "though I wouldn't mind being able to take it off. I don't know if the adhesive will hurt my skin if I leave it on too long". She grinned at him. "Then all you'd have to do to find me would be look for the woman with welts in a mask shape."

"Mine probably won't though", he sighed. "And, I'm sorry, but..."

"It's OK, kitty. Though we should probably talk about that, there's something I've thought of". He nodded, and they both looked back at the couch.

"Can I make a suggestion?" Tikki chimed in.

"Sure?" they said.

"Transform into Ladybug, move this couch into another room and call for a Lucky Charm. I think I have an idea that will work for you two."

Marinette called "Spots on!". To Chat's surprise, and increasing attraction, she held his eyes through the transformation. Moments later, the familiar red-spotted heroine stood before him. She pretended not to see the look in his eyes and instead picked up one end of the folding couch.

"Oh no, my Lady", he smiled. "Claws out!"

She looked up in surprise, meeting his eyes – and he held her gaze through his own transformation. It was Ladybug's turn to take a deep breath, and he smirked at the colour in her cheeks as he picked up his end of the couch.

"Maybe if I head backwards, you can direct me through the door?" he said. "There's not a lot of space in the next room but we can work something out."

The two of them manoeuvred the couch to the doorway, and then Ladybug laughed. "Chaton, when you said there wasn't much space..." The small room was overflowing with books and boxes of papers on shelves around the wall. Against the far wall under a small window, was a desk, also crammed with papers.

"I was thinking that we could lean the couch against the desk?" he said. "I can do most of that, so that you don't look at any of the papers".

"OK", she said, letting him draw the couch into the room and stabilising her end against the floor just inside the doorway. He dragged it the rest of the way and propped it on an angle against the desk and a shelf. A paper slid off the desk, and she caught part of the title – "Anonymity would have suited me perfectly: Simone Beauvoir on w..." before glancing away. Chat grabbed the paper and tucked it back on the desk with a book to weigh it down. She recognised the book from one of her literature and culture units. "The Blood of Others", she said. "I had to read that one."

"Me too", he said. "It was... more relevant than I think the lecturer thought it would be."

She knew that was code for "it came far too close to some of my nightmares", because she'd had them too. She reached out and touched his arm. "I'm here." He placed his hand over hers and gripped it tightly, closing his eyes, and said "I am too."

They went back into the lounge and she called for her Charm.

Moments later, they both burst out laughing. A new couch filled the space – but of a rather unusual shape. It looked as if a fold-down couch had clashed its sides together like the Alps, leaving two narrower flat spaces on either side of a raised barrier running down the centre. They could each just fit lying down on a side, and from a lying down position they wouldn't be able to see each other's faces. It also only just fit in the space.

"Spots off".

"Claws in".

They each caught their kwamis and took them to the kitchen. "It must be time for that kouign amman, Tikki", Marinette grinned. She opened her wheelie case and pulled out a white cardboard box, somehow still mostly unsquished. Chat opened a cold cupboard and pulled out some Camembert for Plagg.

"Oh, that reminds me. I brought something for you too, Plagg", she added, turning back to the wheelie case. She pulled out a second small box, this one hard plastic and sealed carefully with tape, and put it in front of him. Plagg's nose twitched, and he phased through the box. Sounds of enthusiasm came from inside. Chat looked at her, eyebrows raised. She smiled. "I packed a few pieces of Romadur and Cambozola". She paused, then put a hand to her mouth. "Sorry", she said. His mouth twitched. "It's OK. I'd already noticed a touch of German influence in your accent and word choices, and guessed that might have been the country you'd been in."

"You have a good ear."

"A well-trained one". And he stopped there, before saying anything else. She thought about that as she carried the paper box back into the lounge. Trained to hear, but also to recognise. That came with a lot of exposure to people from other countries. She knew he'd been studying somewhere in the humanities, as had she – they'd talked a little about the common units in their degree that everyone at their respective schools took, it didn't reveal anything beyond their own opinions on some of the texts. Had he been doing linguistics? He certainly had the love of wordplay. But, not to ask.

"I read 'The Blood of Others' during that unit on justice and politics in the age of vigilantes", she said instead.

"I remember you telling me about that. Not normally found in the same course as dressmaking?" Chat said, sorting out blankets and dropping them in two heaps on the two sides of the strange couch.

"You could say I had a certain interest in the topic", she smiled. Along with many other superhero fans, so she hadn't stood out at all. "The hardest part was not sounding too personal in any of the essays".

"I'll bet", he grinned.

"Yeah, there was one guy there who, well, he tried, but he was American and his German wasn't that good so he let a few things slip when he asked questions in class. Most people passed it off as just him not knowing the right words. But I'm pretty sure he was actually one of the American heroes." She surprised a momentary look of jealousy on Chat Noir's face. "Don't be silly, kitty. Nobody's my partner but you".

"Even though it would have helped you to talk to someone? Anyone?" Tikki said wryly. Marinette just shrugged. "How about you, kitty? Were you reading about superpowers in politics too?"

"No", he sighed. "It was in one of the general literature and culture units. Every Parisian university has at least one of Beauvoir's novels in the first year texts. I wish it had been a specialist unit. Instead I was surrounded by... well, civilians." He rolled his eyes, and she understood. Some things were too far away from people's day to day existence for them to comprehend as anything other than an abstract mental exercise. In their lives "playing devil's advocate" was just talking about an idea, and they didn't understand why you saw it as an actual heart-hammering, muscle-tensing threat. At least in her course most of the students had spent a lot of time thinking or working in related fields, and had a better baseline and empathy for what the real issues were. The lecturer had been a former military psychologist with a working knowledge of PTSD, too. She'd always felt, well, not quite comfortable in those class discussions, but as safe as she was going to get.

Alya would have loved them.

Marinette turned her thoughts back to the couch again. "So, if I go use your bathroom to change into pyjamas and deglue this mask...?"

"Sounds good to me. I'll go use the other bathroom."

Ten minutes later, Marinette wrapped herself up in the blankets on the couch. Chat still wasn't back, she could hear the shower running. She tore the lid from the box of kouign amman, and piled half the pastries in it, then put it on his side of the couch. She lay down, and put a sleeping mask over her eyes. A minute later she heard Chat come back. There was laughter in his voice. "I like your mask, my Lady".

She grinned. "I got it in a showbag at a funfair. I wasn't sure what I liked best – the ladybug-spotted cat-ear clips or this mask". The sleeping mask was printed with Chat Noir's eyes surrounded by the Ladybug mask, and she'd laughed for at least three minutes the first time she saw it.

"I hope you didn't pay too much", he said. "I'm going to put on a sleeping mask as well. I've washed the white paint out of my hair, so I'm back to full civilian appearance again." He sat against the couch, leaning back on the half-back. "Do you want to sit up with me at first?" She heard what was probably him patting the couch where he meant. It took a wobble or two and some laughter, with both of them now masked, but eventually they were sitting back to back, with the couch coming up about half way between them so that just their shoulders were touching.

"Have you two finished stalling yet?" Tikki's voice was dry.

"I... wasn't stalling?" Marinette didn't sound convincing even to herself.

"Hey, sweet thing. The boy's got good reason to stall, and you know it." Plagg's defence of his holder surprised Marinette.

"They have to sort this out though." Tikki's voice sounded... upset?

"I know." Resignation.

It felt like Marinette's turn to say something. So she did. "OK, I admit I was stalling. Do you want to know why?"

"I would", said Chat behind her.

"I was stalling because... Tikki and Plagg implied that the person that had caused each of us problems was the same person. Which means it's likely that Chat and I at least know of each other as civilians. If we talk about the person that's driven us apart, we'll probably work out each other's identities, and I know Chat doesn't want to tell me yet."

"I do want to tell you, but..." his voice trailed off. "It adds complications. So many, many complications."

"Yes, and you've been holding that all to yourself for how long now?" Plagg's voice was rough, but Marinette sensed kindness behind it. "The Bug can share the burden".

"But she's got her own to carry, and I don't want to add to it."

Tikki's voice was clear and firm. "So you take some of hers in exchange. Hers will be lighter to you than yours is, and yours will be lighter to her than her own. You both win." Marinette had known Tikki for long enough now to sense a slight tinge of "you idiots" in her last sentence.

"But..." Chat Noir's voice was hesitant, vulnerable.

"I only have one other hesitation", she said after it became clear that Chat wasn't going to say anything else. "I feel like, and this is going to sound silly but it might be important, I feel like this person has pushed me around and pushed my boundaries so hard and often already. Sharing our identities because of them is like one more thing they're pushing us into. I'll resent them for it when it should be a happy thing".

Chat's breath drew in, and she knew he agreed with her.

"That's true", Tikki agreed, "and it's important, but... is it more important than that person having kept you apart in the first place?"

"Bug, let me tell you something", Plagg interrupted. "Tikki said you almost didn't come back. Well, Chat almost wasn't here for you to come back to."

"Plagg! Don't!"

Marinette felt Chat go tense behind her. She tensed too with the implications, and without thinking reached a hand behind her to grab him. He put his hand over hers and held it to him like he was drowning.

"You didn't have to tell her that" he said, sounding almost sulky.

"I think I did", Plagg said. "Ladybug has always had your back, and she's been the one of the two of you that grabs the problem and shakes it until an answer falls out. You didn't know what to do any more. Now that she knows, she won't ever let you lose yourself in the darkness." His voice softened, just a little. "I'll always be here too, but I'm not the kind of kwami that's good at shining a light."

"Had it really got that bad?" Marinette's voice was soft.

There was a long pause. "Yes", he finally admitted. "It wasn't any one thing, it was just... all so overwhelming. Everything was... something I couldn't talk about."

She understood, oh she understood _so hard._ She reached back with her other arm, and attempted to pull him closer to her in a kind of reverse hug. It was uncomfortable, and awkward, and he let her do it.

"I wouldn't push either of you into this if there was any choice", Plagg continued, "but we're kinda at that point now".

"Agreed", Tikki chimed.

Marinette sighed, and she heard and felt Chat sigh at the same time. She dropped her arms from the ridiculously difficult hold and stretched her shoulders forward for a moment. "Tell you what, Chaton", she said. "Let's talk about this person whose shadow is between us. We'll lie down, we'll be right next to each other. We'll probably work each other out along the way, but... at least we'll have worked it out ourselves. We'll have earnt each other's names."

She heard the shrug in his voice. "That's as good a way as any, I guess. I don't think Plagg and Tikki are going to let us not have this conversation."

"That's right", both kwamis exclaimed in unison. Marinette felt a feather-light touch on her cheek. "You'll do fine", her kwami said quietly. Right then, Marinette appreciated the reassurance.


	3. In Her Absence

_A/N: Some responses to reviews at the end of this chapter. Thanks for reading and all the follows, favourites and reviews!_

* * *

They stretched out, lying down either side of the barrier. Marinette pulled the blankets up around her – it really was getting cold. Either that or she was really worried about this conversation.

Yeah, both.

"I'll start", Chat said. "I might as well begin ripping the bandaid off." She reached up and squeezed his hand, lying loose at the top of the couch. He squeezed back.

"So, civilian me used to have friends", he said. "Not many, but there were three or four in particular I saw fairly often. One I'd known since I was very little, one I'd made friends with at school, and two others that often hung out in the same vicinity. One of those latter two was the problem". He sighed. "Some of this will make more sense once you know who civilian me is, but I'll come back to that when you ask me to. Anyway", he went on, "what happened was that I'd try to hang out with my friend from school, but this other person kept making it really awkward. I liked them, but... you know how you said you felt like you were a project, not a person? I was always being studied, planned about, organised. I already told you that my civilian life is very rigid, full of rules. My oldest friend was pretty bossy, always trying to run things their way and expecting me to follow along. I thought that was normal, but my school friend taught me it wasn't. So I'd started to think that with more friends I'd have more freedom. But here was this new person trying to box in my choices, too. And I never really knew why. One night, not too long after Hawkmoth, I just snapped. I'd had to pick up all this extra stuff as a civilian because... well, we'd finished high school and... anyway. I was exhausted. I wanted to hang out with a friend. This person took what should have been just chilling with my friend and turned it into this big dinner plan, with all these hints about how special it was going to be. I told them I wasn't free for that, I actually had a lot of other stuff I needed to do. Which wasn't completely true, I'd blocked off the evening to just do my own thing, hang out with my friend for an hour or two and then maybe yowl on the rooftops or something, I don't know. You'd told me just the night before that you were planning to go away to study, so I was feeling a bit down. I really didn't want to be with lots of people". He stopped, breathed in and out carefully. Marinette squeezed his hand. "They just said 'It'll be good for you, we'll see you at nineteen' and that was it. It was like they hadn't heard anything I'd said. I turned, and I walked away. I blocked their number, and the numbers of the friends we'd had in common just in case that person tried calling me from someone else's phone or something, and I didn't contact any of them again." He stopped for a moment. "I could have, I suppose. But... it would have been hard. And I really was super busy as a civilian. There was so much I had to deal with, and so much I couldn't tell anyone about or let slip even the slightest hint of. It was just easier to leave it all and move on, you see?"

She did see. "Did you ever hear anything from them again?"

"No, not really. The guy who'd been my friend at school, we've passed on the street once or twice and I don't blank him if that happens. Mostly though he's easy to avoid. He... has a job in the public eye, so I hear about where he'll be sometimes. Then I try to avoid having any work in the same place at the same time, so that he and I aren't forced to hang out at a predictable time and place that the other person might find out about." He paused, like what he'd said was a complete understatement or simplification, then went on. "The others... well, if they tried to reach me, I chose to not know about it."

"Oh, Chat", she said. "You've been as isolated as I have. Here I thought you'd kept your civilian friends."

"Just like I thought you'd kept yours, my Lady."

They both laughed dryly. "We are a pair, aren't we", she said. "Heroes of Paris, risking our lives weekly and sometimes daily, in unpredictable and unplannable situations, always on the alert for the next time it's all going to go up in smoke or down in flames, and the thing we can't handle is ordinary friends. That lecturer I had who was a military psych? He said that one of the things that gets soldiers is the constant alertness because you know you can't predict the mess but you'd better be ready for it or else. And then you go back to a normal life, and you don't know how to switch that alertness off and you don't know how everyone can just ignore all these little things that you are seeing all the time. It's pattern recognition, but you can't tell the difference between safe patterns and life-threatening ones any more. He said so then a lot of ex-soldiers end up isolating themselves, because dealing with civilians is too hard".

Chat Noir exhaled loudly. "That's pretty... spot on".

"You had to say it, didn't you?"

"Yep. So, my Lady, how did you lose the civilians in your life?"

"I threw my phone in a bin."

The sound of his laughter made it worth it, for just a moment. "That's... joyously simple", he breathed.

"I was pretty angry at the time. And fed up. It helped that I was getting on a train, so they couldn't just go around to my place and find me. I swear, they would have turned up with a spare phone battery just to make sure I had the power to take their calls."

He huffed. "Yeah."

"There was still all the social media, of course", she admitted. "But I'd been playing with a new set of accounts online anyway, I was thinking maybe for a home business or something while I was studying, and I hadn't told anyone about them yet. So I just logged out of all my old accounts. I didn't remember the passwords even then, they were saved on the phone I threw away. So not logging back in was easy".

"I envy you", he said, reaching his hand over the barrier to find hers. "I guess you'll find out soon enough, but, I don't have any anonymity. At all. I've managed to keep this apartment a near-secret only with a lot of effort. It simply wasn't possible for me to drop off anyone's radar. So I had to block people, and use a very good PA to help block them for me."

"Like Hawkmoth did", she said. "Not that I'm comparing you to him at all. But he did have an incredibly good PA".

"...yeah, like Hawkmoth". His voice was almost ironic.

They laid in silence for a few minutes. Marinette thought about the things Chat had revealed. A rigid life with many rules, no time to rest and no anonymity? However had he coped with the comedown after they finally beat Hawkmoth and there was no immediate need for Chat Noir?

Oh, yeah. He hadn't.

She hadn't done a lot better. But at least she'd been able to lick her wounds in private, and going to another country meant she hadn't had to pretend nothing had changed in her life. Some of the class discussions with that lecturer had helped too. She couldn't imagine having not had any of that.

"Chat, I'm... I'm going to take the sleeping mask off. I'll stay right where I am, you don't have to look, not now, not any time. But... I think Tikki and Plagg are right. It's not about the shadow in the room. It's about you and me. Us. I think we need to do this next bit of our life, whatever it is, together as much as we can."

He stirred, then let go of her hand. "OK", was all he said.

She slipped the mask off, dropped it on the floor and waited -

...but all she heard was him lying still in the blankets, just centimetres away.

Suddenly the silence broke. "Laisse-moi te chanter, D'aller te faire en, hmm-mmmm".

Chat's phone was over on the coffee table they'd pushed aside. "I have to answer it this time", he said, sitting up and stumbling masked towards where the phone was. He grabbed it, facing away from her and pulling up the mask a little to see the screen as he swiped. She could see from where she lay that his hair was back to the familiar blond, but other than that he could be anyone.

No. He was someone. Someone she knew very well. He was her own Chat Noir, and she couldn't let him lose himself.

"It's me", he said. "Sorry, I have someone here." Pause. "I answered the second time when it was safe". Pause.

Longer pause.

"Ladybug". Pause. "Yes, I am."

A surprisingly long pause in which she could hear the other person's tone of voice become insistent.

"All right". He tugged the mask back down and held out the phone towards where she sat. "She wants to talk with you."

Her breath caught, froze. "Who is it?"

"Oh, no, no, my Lady, it's fine. It's not... whoever we were both thinking of. It's... my PA".

Surprised, she leant over to reach for the phone, and fell over the couch spine. He caught her almost without trying, even blindfolded as he was, as if it was something he'd done more than once before.

As if it was something she remembered him doing, and while she couldn't put her finger on when or where, for some reason the anonymous blond in her memory wasn't Chat Noir.

"Ladybug". The crisp voice in her ear broke her train of thought. Familiar, but she couldn't place it. Someone she'd spoken with when she lived in Paris, but didn't know well.

"Yes, I'm here", she answered.

"Who are you with right now?"

The question seemed odd. "It's just me and, um, your boss here?" she replied. She couldn't give his civilian name, but she didn't want to out him as a superhero either.

"So he's Chat Noir at the moment", the voice said. "Has he told you who he is under the mask?"

"No."

"I actually called him about something else, but this is important. Please make sure he does tell you who he is. He needs you to know, he needs you as an active ally, but he's... set in his ways."

"Um..."

"Pass me back to Chat now."

"Um..."

Marinette held the phone out to Chat and said "She wants to speak to you again".

After a fumble or two his hand connected with hers and he took the phone. He listened to the other end for a minute.

"All right. Yes, I think you're right. They've seen him in action, they've asked for him specifically. We have to book him if he's at all available, and I know he'll make himself available for this without question. Maybe tomorrow we can look at who we could get to be the frontispiece of our end. I know I'm our biggest drawcard right now, but we need to start sharing the spotlight amongst some of our other talent, see who we can start to raise up in my place." Pause. "Yeah, you're right. But... we can strategise tomorrow. Hey, maybe I could talk Ladybug into it". Pause. "I don't know. She could possibly be a great fit, but it's unknown". Pause.

"Yes, that would mean I'd have to tell her. Fine. Fine. Now, can I go back to being uncontactable for the night?"

A moment later, he hung up. She sat on his side of the couch still, waiting.

"Did you recognise her voice?" he asked, still facing away from her.

"It was familiar but I couldn't place it", she said.

He sighed and his shoulders slumped. "I keep thinking this will be easy. All I have to do is say two words, or take the mask off. Or I hope maybe suddenly you'll work out who I am without my saying anything at all. But you haven't. And I just can't."

Instinctively, Marinette stood up, and manoeuvred around the mess of furniture until she was right behind him, pressed against his back. She reached up and touched the elastic of his sleeping mask with both hands, cradling his head. "I can do it for you, but only if it's OK with you. If you trust me to do this for you. I have your back."

He said nothing for a long, long minute. They stood there together, pressed close, her touching the mask but not holding it, him facing away.

Finally he breathed out. "All right."

She lifted the elastic over his head and dropped the mask away, but put her arms back around him and stayed where she was. "Turn around when you're ready, Kitty."

He turned around in her arms, and his eyes were still closed. Smiling, she kissed his eyelids then pulled back a little to see his face. Her breath caught.

Really, he was right, and she should have put it together by now. But she'd made the very simple mistake of assuming even up to the last minute that they hadn't known each other as civilians, any more than in passing.

As soon as you took that assumption away, it was obvious.

"Oh, Kitty", she said, tracing his face. "You really did have a much bigger burden to bear than I realised." A moment after, she burst out laughing. His eyes flew open in shock. "What's so funny?" Then he paused, took in her face, and stopped talking completely, mouth gaping open as if all the words were on mute.

"What's so funny is that you _do_ have Hawkmoth's PA".

His mouth moved without words for a moment more, then he finally got out "She came with the family business".

For some reason, that struck Marinette as really funny. She sank back down onto the couch, tugging him – Adrien! - with her, and they let the laughter take them.

"Also", she said a few minutes later, "we're idiots".

"Yes, yes you are", came a voice from across the room.

"Plagg! Leave them be!" Tikki scolded from their hiding spot.

"Well, my Ladynette", Adrien said, as his breathing came back to something like normal. "I ghosted you".

"Hang on, no. What time did you block me, do you remember?"

"It was about half an hour after that conversation, so, just before the end of work? Maybe about seventeen?"

"My train was at sixteen thirty. So I ghosted you first. Oh, and I was too busy talking to you every week to notice".

They laughed again.

"So, Maribug."

"Are you going to keep doing that?"

"Only until I get used to the idea. Which might be a little while. Anyway. What I was going to say was, why don't we have our conversation about what we've been up to all over again? Because I'd actually like to know what you were doing in Germany, I just was trying to avoid asking you for any details that I wouldn't be able to share as well."

"Mmm. How about you start with whatever it was on that phone call that you were talking about getting Ladybug into?"

He leaned against her with a sheepish look. "Oh, that. Um." He rubbed the back of his neck. "So, that school friend I didn't blank but kept avoiding?"

"I'm guessing... Nino."

"Yes. Well, I might have, um, paid for some other fashion gigs to book him in when people in my company started showing interest in his DJing, so that he was too busy to work on any of our shows with me in them. I think he knew, but he didn't mind because it was good pay and good work. But then that exposure meant he just kept getting more popular, more on people's minds, and now one of the businesses that Agreste is partnering with has insisted we book him for our winter show."

"Victim of your own successful plan, Adrien Noir."

He poked her.

"Hey! If you can do it, I can try too."

"I'm better at it".

She sighed. "Yes, you are. Most of the nicknames I have for you are... tainted."

The shadow in the room loomed over them again, for a moment.

"So, I suggested to Nathalie that we get some of our other models to lead the show. I can't let Agreste become a one-man-thing anyway, it's too big and too exhausting and I don't have my father's, um..."

"Ego", came the voice from across the room.

"I was going to say stamina, Plagg. Anyway, I've got to hand some parts of it over to people, and we've got access to talent. Time to see who's willing to take it a step further. Shake up what we're doing a bit, maybe a lot."

"Ladybug is NOT going to model clothes for you."

"Actually, I was hoping that you might help on some of the design lines, if that dress you wore tonight is any indication of what you're able to do. If we did our show as a showcase of some of the young and hip designers moving through our ranks, it makes a..." He stopped. "Let's not talk about this now. I'm supposed to be off work. Maybe I can bring you along to tomorrow's meeting with Nathalie?"

"How did you swing that, anyway?" she asked, puzzled. Nathalie had been headed for jail time along with her former boss, Gabriel, but Adrien had managed to get the courts to assign her as his personal PA instead in some kind of deal. Another reason she hadn't tried to talk to him after Hawkmoth's defeat, just in case she gave it away.

"It was complicated", he admitted. "But Nathalie had been pretty badly damaged by the Miraculous. She needed better and more reliable medical care than the minimum security facilities could give. So as Adrien I suggested that she perform "community service", helping keep the big secret and keep business partners from asking problematic questions. She had the perfect skillset. I encouraged it too as Chat Noir when I gave evidence to the judge on Miraculous damage and the likelihood of her reoffending, you weren't there for that testimony. She and the courts accepted house arrest on those terms, and I installed her in an adapted apartment in the Agreste headquarter building. Her bracelet doesn't let her leave the building, but she has work and home and medical care all there so she's OK." He looked down. "I told her who I was before I'd let her officially accept it though. She had to know that she was actually being rehired as Chat Noir's PA, and she'd be keeping more secrets than the courts knew about."

"That was risky", Marinette said, stroking his hand. "But you're right, she's got the perfect skillset. She kept anyone from realising Hawkmoth's secret for years." She drew in a breath, but it was too late, the words were out, and Chat Noir's – Adrien's - eyes went blank. "Even me", he admitted.

"No, no, kitty. You didn't know. It wasn't your fault. I wanted to tell Adrien that so many times, but... I couldn't speak with him. You. Um."

"Yeah", he sighed. "Intellectually, I know it's not my fault, but you know? I just keep thinking. All those years we fought him."

"All those years he kept you at arms length and emotionally abused you so that you'd hang off his words without questioning his actions", she interrupted. At his shocked look, she continued. "Oh yes, we saw. But you were SO NICE that we couldn't break you out of it."

"I still should have realised."

"Sure, and I should have realised my best friend was right next to me the whole time and kept getting invited to stuff with me. I didn't. Did you?"

He actually blushed. "No...t consciously."

From across the room, Plagg called out "He sleep talks sometimes. Kid, it'll cost you a wheel of Camembert for me to not tell her what you said about Marinette".

Adrien got up from the couch, went into the kitchen, and came back with an entire wheel of Camembert which he handed to Plagg. Marinette looked at him with raised eyebrows, and he shrugged. A small smile crept across her face.

"Plagg, how would you like the rest of that Cambozola?" she said slyly.

"Ooh, the Bug plays dirty", Plagg teased. Adrien's face went even redder.

In the end, they talked for another three hours, slowly filling each other in on the details of the last two years. Adrien admired the photos of Marinette's school assignments, both clothing and non-wearable design pieces, and laughed at her stories of attempting to live in Berlin with her imperfect German. She got him to tell about some of the fancy parties he'd been to, and to open up about running a business, especially being thrown into it at the top like he had been. He'd only been studying part-time, it turned out, trying to fit in the units of business management plus some humanities classes here and there around the demands of the company, and that was only possible with Nathalie's extreme scheduling-fu.

"Thankfully my position as head of the family business counts towards additional credit as 'work placement or internship'," he said, stretching. "Otherwise this degree would take forever. And I'd really like to get my MBA eventually. I feel a bit like an impostor most of the time".

"Well, technically, you are", she teased him. He gave her a mock pout, and she added "You're pretending to be Adrien Agreste when you're really Chat Noir". He laughed, then sighed. "Both now, really", he said. "Or is it neither?"

She hugged him. "At least you have the internship bit sorted out. I'm not looking forward to trying to organise my one this year. Every student in the class wants the same places".

"Hey, I have an idea on that", he said, frowning. "Come do your internship with me over the holidays".

She sucked in a breath. "Kitty..." she began, "a place at Agreste is on the top of everyone's list. I'd..."

He put a finger on her lips. "You'd be a perfect fit. And I didn't say with Agreste, though it would be. I said with _me_".

"That would be even worse! It would be queue-jumping. You have all these great people working for you already and I'd be going straight over their heads."

He took her by the shoulders, and looked her in the eyes.

"Marinette, there _is no queue_. There is literally nobody else I could hire in the position I'm talking about, because they'd have to... well, they'd have to know about my father. And other things. I appreciate you'd feel out of your depth – gods, do I appreciate it", he groaned. "But Nathalie and I will organise for you to have the same sort of mentoring you'd have gotten in a normal entry-level internship, and I will manage the other staff issues that might come up about it because that's actually my job. Your designing skills are up to par, I know what I'm looking at, it's only experience that you lack. Which you have to get somewhere, so why not with me?"

She wavered. "It would be.. fantastic", she admitted. "I feel a bit like it's too good to be true, which worries me". It did more than worry her. It sent her thoughts spiralling into so, so many ways it could all go wrong and she'd be hated in the industry forever.

"Bug, think about it this way", Plagg interrupted. "Agreste is a family business, emphasis on family. You're not jumping any queues if you marry in".

"Plagg!" Tikki yelled. "Not helping!" She grinned at her holder. "He's right though, you know." Marinette and Adrien looked at each other and both blushed very, very red.

"Let's, um, leave that discussion for later?" he said finally.

"Agreed", she said instantly.

Tikki piped up. "I don't want to stop you two talking, but what time is that meeting with Nathalie? It's four am now".

"Uh-oh", Adrien said. "The meeting is at eight. Lady Mari, how do you feel about getting some sleep?"

"I think it sounds like a good idea", she said, and looked back at the couch. The very narrow couch. He looked at her, she looked at him.

"Do we need that barrier any more?"

"Not really, no."

She grinned. "Let's start a new chapter then, kitty. Spots on!"

It took quite a bit of muffled swearing, and a bit of arguing over which end went first, and there was at least one stubbed toe on a chair that wasn't pushed far enough out of the way. Chat Noir had to push the elevator button with his tail. Then getting through the fire escape door was just annoying. But eventually they got the Lucky Charm couch up onto the rooftop.

"Together on three?"

"How about on zero? We're already together".

They lifted the couch, smiling.

"Zero! Miraculous Ladybug!"

The couch made it almost two metres out from the building before turning into a swirl of pink and silver ladybugs that expanded out across the city, looking for things to heal and restore. A handful of the ladybugs settled on Chat Noir and Ladybug before disappearing into tiny sparkles, and they smiled at each other. It was definitely time for them to begin healing too. With each other. Hand in hand, they went back downstairs to get some sleep.

* * *

Alya's phone alerted her awake. Then alerted again, and again. She mumbled, swiping at it, glaring at the screen. It was six thirty am, and she'd only got to bed at three after going to the club Nino was working at for the night. It had been a really good party vibe and she'd danced for hours.

The feed scrolling down her screen woke her up fully. Someone had captured a video of Ladybug's familiar charm spreading across the skyline and posted it on a news forum. Not her blog, which had fallen out of prominence in the last year or two. And not her employer's website either. The video had an insane number of hits for this time of the morning, especially when only posted – she checked the timestamp – about an hour and a half before. Darnit. Things had been so quiet for months that she'd set her keyword triggers to not wake her until they reached a critical number. She was going to regret that.

Her phone rang. It was her editor. "Alya, first sighting of Ladybug in two years. Tell me you're on this".

"I am now".

"Why weren't you on it already, superhero specialist?"

"Because it's 6:30 am?"

"Up and at'em, junior. That story should have been on our site first, and you weren't around to see it. Get to it."

* * *

_A/N: Review responses! Thank you to everyone who leaves them, I love reading them no matter what you say. It's nice to know people are reading and reacting to the story! I really wanted to write something that was fluffy but also post-war with all that entails. If you want your heart torn apart, check out the book they discuss._

_There've been lots of reviews all saying one thing, so here's the answer to the Big Question: no, you will not see Alya's response or resolution in this story. It's titled "In Her Absence" because the point of the story is that everything important happens when Alya's not there to see it or be part of it. (You thought it was Ladybug's absence?! Nope, it's Alya's.) She is only the shadow in the room that has shaped everything else to bring it to this point. This is crucial, which is why I can't put her POV back into the story. If you want more Alya, feel free to check out "The Cat With Earrings" (the other story I'm working on atm, which is Alya/Nino saving the day with a largely absent Ladybug and Chat Noir). I'm also working on a historical with Alya/Trixx in the Celtic culture of Halstead D, though who knows when that will be ready to go up. So Alya's about - but not in this story, sorry!_


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